


Prisoner

by SkyisGray



Category: Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: 2014 SteveBucky Bookclub, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-20
Updated: 2014-06-20
Packaged: 2018-02-05 10:40:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1815571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkyisGray/pseuds/SkyisGray
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winter Soldier's never met Hydra agents like these.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prisoner

**Author's Note:**

> This is a prompt fill for the [SteveBucky Bookclub](http://stuckybookclub.tumblr.com/) I'm participating in this summer! 
> 
> Prompt 1: Steve and Bucky's first interaction after the events of Cap 2. 
> 
> So this is me loosely adhering to the prompt. Steve doesn’t come in till the end, but normally in fics he’s Bucky’s first point of contact post CATWS, and I wanted to try something else. 
> 
> For the record, I believe that Bucky is very capable and independent when he’s ‘in the wind’ or on a mission. Based on his behavior around Pierce and the Hydra scientists, though, I also believe that he’s conditioned to give up his autonomy when he’s in their custody and follow orders without question. I wanted to write about Bucky breaking his Hydra/Red Room/Department X programming before Steve comes into the picture.

The soldier stares down at the pile of soaked, broken limbs outfitted in their red, white, and blue monstrosity.  His arm twinges like he’s snapped too many neuron connections, and his mind screams with what punishment awaits him for this failed mission.  His heart pounds with the need to go to ground, take cover, report back, leave the scene.

But he’s waiting for something, and it’s keeping him rooted to the spot. 

Minutes pass, and then it occurs to him to turn the body on its front.  He pushes at it with his foot. 

As soon as the body is turned, it starts to cough and choke wetly, and a spray of river water hits the grass by its mouth.  It takes a wheezy breath, but otherwise, doesn’t regain consciousness. 

Now the soldier can leave.

 

The Hydra cells in Washington are too risky.  The television in the corner of the coffee shop tells the soldier that Hydra has been taken down, something called SHIELD has been taken down, and Captain America is missing. 

The soldier thinks of muddy river water spewing out of bloodless lips. 

What’s left of Hydra in Washington is compromised at best, more likely destroyed. 

He sits and thinks, shifting through his mind as he scans the coffee shop for threats. 

Each time they wipe him, he loses days or even weeks.  They can’t scrape it all away, though; images and sounds pile up where they can’t reach with their drugs and their electrodes, and he usually doesn’t have a context but he hordes them and never says anything. 

He remembers being told that the backup extraction plan is New York.  He remembers being told that he is forbidden to go to New York.  He doesn’t know which memory is older; he can’t even tell from which decade the instructions date.

He decides to go to New York anyway because he can’t think of another Hydra cell set up to contain him. 

As he leaves the coffee shop, he catches sight of the pastries on display by the cash register.  His stomach pains him.  He leaves without disturbing the tiny bell attached to the door. 

 

No one is waiting for him in the basement of the abandoned warehouse in New York.  It strikes him as wrong, and he spends several hours assessing the rooms and labs with his fingers on the trigger of the 357 Derringer.  His stomach clenches again, and he distantly remembers that it’s been over twenty four hours since anyone’s fed him. 

He finds the refrigerator and counter space that seem most likely to hold his food.  Every tool is where it should be, and every canister is sealed.  Everything looks normal, except for the fact that there is no plastic jar waiting for him on the dull metal surface. 

His breathing speeds up as he realizes that there’s truly no one here.  He needs food, and he needs rest, and there’s no one to put these things in front of him.  Delving into his memory scrapes again, he remembers being allowed to eat foods at restaurants on select missions.  He turns to leave the facility, but then he remembers that he’d had to acclimate himself to solid foods first.  Eating something unfamiliar to his stomach won’t do much more than make him sick, and there are very few things he despises more than throwing up in front of scientists who complain and jeer and spray hoses at him to clean him off. 

He turns back to the refrigerator and opens it to see more canisters.  Frustrated, he grips the flimsy metal handle and feels it compress under his grip. 

“Woah, hey man, don’t break the appliances.”  He turns before the man is finished speaking, Derringer trained on his forehead.  The man is blonde, six-foot-three-inches, 230 pounds.  His short hair is spiked so it doesn’t lay on his forehead, and his expression is blank and calm despite the fact that he’s a finger twitch from certain death. 

It’s a good thing that the gun is in the soldier’s hands; other hands might twitch. 

The most important facet of the man’s appearance is the bright green body suit with yellow straps and gloves that he’s wearing.  The soldier lowers the gun from the face of a Hydra agent. 

“Where were you in the facility?” he asks darkly as he holsters his weapon.  He glares at the agent, too irritated to care that he’s verging on level 3 insubordinate behavior. 

“I was in the john.  What’s up, are you hungry?” the agent asks.  He moves past the soldier to look into the refrigerator.  “Well, fuck.” 

The soldier doesn’t like this agent.  He’s either highly skilled at concealing himself, or he hasn’t been at his post.  He talks differently than most of the agents do, and he seems completely useless as a handler. 

“What do you normally eat?” the agent asks, looking at the soldier with a raised eyebrow. 

“It’s in the computer,” the soldier tells him.  It’s unsettling that he has to explain this, and he still senses that something is off. 

“Right,” the agent tells him, pointing at the soldier as he moves away.  “I’m on it.  Give me ten minutes.  Go sit down and, uh, take your mask off.” 

The soldier follows the order pliantly, unclasping his mask and sitting down on the bench closest to the door.  He watches silently as the agent takes out a USB drive and plugs it into a computer terminal, then waits several minutes for the system to ding.  He doesn’t think that’s normal. 

“So you’re probably wondering why I have very little fucking idea what to do here,” the agent tells him as he starts to type something.  The soldier has been wondering.  “After the SHIELD files hit the internet, it was pretty chaotic.  A lot of agents got temporarily transferred.  I got sent in to deal with you, and it’s been a while since I had my, uh, Winter Soldier training.  So bear with me here.”  The soldier sees the screen change color as the agent opens a file. 

“Great, so you eat smoothies.  I can make you one of those.  On it.”  The agent flits back and forth between the refrigerator and the counter, muttering to himself as he scoops powders and thick liquid into a container.  “Protein, makes sense.  Vitamins.  No idea what that is, but we’ll go with it.  This smells like death, okay.  Geez, how many calories is this thing?” 

The solder hears the whirring metallic sounds of the food being blended, and finally, the agent directly places the jar into his hands.  He gives him an unimpressed look, but eagerly takes the grayish food and gulps it down. 

“Maybe now you’ll stop glaring at me.  So this says you’re supposed to drink an additional liter of water every day.  How much water you had today?”  The soldier shakes his head as he continues to swallow the chunky mixture in mouthfuls.  “No water?  Man, come on.  Be proactive about this shit.” 

The agent leaves the room and comes back with a bottle of water.  He sets it down on the bench next to the soldier and exits again, saying “hang tight,” over his shoulder as he walks out the door. 

It’s an unclear order, but the soldier has food and water, and it’s easy to sit by himself without scientists buzzing around him, pricking him with long needles to take blood out and put liquids in. 

He continues sitting and replaying the mission in his head when he finishes.  Lips coughing up dirty water onto grass.  Pile of soaked, broken limbs.  Swimming and pulling something heavy.  Letting go and falling through machinery and cables.  “End of the line.”  Seeing the target stalk toward him, knowing that he deserves death for allowing himself to be trapped like this. Choking-

“Okay, medical exam time.  Step this way.”  The soldier stands and follow the agent into the adjacent lab. 

 

Two days later, the soldier has been allowed to sleep in his cell for a combined twelve hours.  He’s been fed relatively on schedule five times.  He’s been X-rayed and shot up with three liquids.  The memory scrapes tell him that there should be more shots and less sleep and a mission. 

A mission or Cryofreeze.  The soldier doesn’t know why he’s awake still. 

He brings it up with the agent because he hasn’t been punished for anything so far.  He’s perhaps testing the waters. 

“You like being frozen?” the agent asks him in return.  He can’t think of a reply.  He hates the Cryochamber, but the idea of being asked for his opinion at all, much less on something so definitive,  makes him wonder what the agent is playing at. 

“Or a mission.  When am I getting a mission?” he asks after wavering. 

“We’ll hear more about your next mission soon.  Another agent’ll be here today.  A girl agent, so we should probably make sure you’re not a greaseball when she gets here.”  The soldier frowns; he can’t tell this time if it’s the words that don’t make sense or the strange, loose feeling in his head that’s been building up the past two days.  It makes it hard to focus at times, but he doesn’t know how to communicate it to the agent.  Or if he should.    

“Showering?” he asks.  The agent nods. 

“Yep, showering.”  He squints at the soldier.  “You need help with that too?”

“No,” the soldier tells him, although he’s never been in the shower chamber by himself before.  Then again, he’s never been in most of the containment facilities by himself before.  This agent isn’t very good at his job, but that’s the soldier’s gain.    

Pulling off his uniform and letting each piece drop to the floor outside the shower chamber, because normally there’s someone there to take them, the soldier studies the nozzle and the controls.  Repeated, ritualistic memories make an indelible impression even after the wipes.  That’s how he knows that he’s not allowed to touch the controls.  But he can work his head around most technical things; the controls aren’t difficult. 

Cold water comes out of the spout when he turns the handle one way; hot water when he turns it the other.  He washes in hot water solely because it’s forbidden and he’s still testing the limits of his new handler.  It turns his skin pink, and he’s sure that he’s going to be caught. 

When he returns to the lab, dripping and sticking to the inside of his uniform, the agent looks at him with a frown.  Finally.  Something like excited dread thrums under his skin, and the soldier waits to see how he’ll be punished for his liberties.

“You got any other clothes?  Not that I don’t love the goth army-man look, but we should probably wash those at some point.” 

The agent leaves him standing at attention, panic accompanying bewilderment.   

The red-haired female agent arrives that evening.  Five-foot-seven-inches, 130 pounds.  The same green body suit, though much more heavily armed than the first agent. 

She demands a status report from the first agent immediately, and the soldier smirks to himself and waits for the man to be censured.

“So the Winter Soldier here only eats this colorless, tasteless, fifteen-hundred calorie protein smoothie, and he refuses to make it himself.  He only takes showers on demand.  He has one outfit.  Basically, agent, it’s been like watching really angry paint dry.” 

The soldier shifts his weight, positive that he’s about to be ordered to kill the man.  He’s ready, and even though being under the agent’s care has had its pleasing moments, he’s eager.  He wants to make it clear that the past two days were not his fault. 

“Stand down, asset,” she tells him, and he immediately moves his hand away from the TEC-38 holstered at his thigh.  “What does he do all day?” she asks the agent again. 

“Mostly just stands around menacingly.  Looks like he’s imagining what my brain would look like pureed and splashed all over this room.  Sits in the examination room pretty frequently for no fucking reason.” 

“Perhaps, agent, we should be mindful of the fact that the asset is standing in front of us and can hear us,” the female agent says calmly.  It confuses the soldier. 

“True.  Well, I want to talk to you about the injection plan, so let’s plunk him in front of some cartoons and talk away from the kid for a few minutes.”  By this point, the soldier is used to ignoring most of what the agent says unless it’s a direct order. 

“Asset, go sit in your cell, please,” the female agent says as she follows the male agent toward the main lab. 

‘Please.’  He rolls the word over in his mind for the next several hours as he sits on the platform where he sleeps. 

 

“Asset, make your own smoothie.  The directions are on the console,” the female agent tells him nearly a week later.  He nods and stands up with the intention of heading for the refrigerator. 

His head spins and his vision narrows to a black pinprick before zooming out again.  It only takes a few seconds to steady himself, but the female agent notices. 

“You okay?” she asks as he compensates by moving more quickly.  He keeps his eyes on her, waiting for her to say more. 

She turns to the male agent, who is eating something yellow that smells like fat with a blood-red substances smeared across the plate.  

“Withdrawal,” she whispers, but the soldier hears it anyway.

“He’s probably feeling other shit and not saying anything,” the male agent says without bothering to lower his voice.  She hits him, but it’s a weak hit that doesn’t incapacitate him. 

The soldier reads the orders on the console and dumps liquids and powders into the blending machine.  Like the shower, it’s not a difficult task.  He’s more than capable of doing this on his own; it’s just that in his experience, others prefer to do it for him.  These agents must be truly low-ranking not to know how to handle him. 

As long as they take the blame, though, he gets a thrill out of doing this for himself.  He could put in extra protein.  Or he could leave out the greens powder.  He doesn’t, but he could. 

“Nice job,” the female agent tells him when he’s seated and drinking.  “Today, you’re either going to visit the armory for weapon maintenance, or you’re going to go topside and find some clothes for an undercover mission.  Which one you up for?” 

The soldier stops mid-swallow. 

“What is the mission?” he asks.  It will give him some clue about what answer the female agent is asking for. 

“We don’t have all the details yet.” 

He works his jaw, suddenly furious that he’s being set up for failure.  The past week has been devoid of punishment; no Cryofreeze, no memory wipes, and no punitive electric shocks.  He hasn’t been beaten, or cut.  He hasn’t been injected with anything that makes him feel like his very bones are on fire. 

But of course, it’s a temporary status quo.  Sometimes handlers look for a reason to punish him, because they’re scared and they want to remind him who really has the power in this equation.  He’s been waiting for these two to try something like this for days now. 

“Weapons,” he says, ready to get it over with.  Then again, there’s a 50% chance he hasn’t answered incorrectly. 

“Okay.  You know where it is.  You know how to clean your own firearms?”  He knows everything about his guns, even if he doesn’t personally maintain them. 

“Yes.” 

“Cool.”  He stares them both down.  “Uh, dismissed.”  He turns and walks toward the armory, frustration prickling his skin and making him want to rake his nails up and down his sides. 

He gives into the frustration that night; his nails make bloody gouge marks in the skin of his pale, skin-covered neck. 

The female agent sees as she checks on him before he goes to sleep. 

“Shit, agent, bring me a washcloth.”  The scratches have already healed, but the blood is still streaked on his neck and caked beneath his nails.  The male agent comes into the small, low cell with a damp cloth. 

“What’d he do?”

“He scratched himself.  Asset, why did this happen?”  The soldier stares at the fluorescent bulbs fixed to the ceiling and doesn’t answer. 

“She asked you a question,” the male agent snaps, and the soldier sees the female agent’s hand reach back and settle on the man’s chest, calming him. 

“It’s okay.  His nails are too long.  Go get my nail kit so I can cut them.”  The man obeys and brings back a small, pink case from which the woman draws out a silver, metallic device.  The soldier waits for pain, but instead, the woman cups his hand and gingerly eases the blades around his fingernails before snapping them shut and cutting off the ends of the nails. 

It’s calming.  The click of the nail cutting device as it breaks away parts of him without registering as a threat or breaking the skin continues until she’s fixed his real hand.  She lets it go and it falls against his sleeping platform. 

The male agent is gone, and she eyes him as she tucks the nail cutting device back into the shiny pink case. 

“We might want to do something about your hair too.”  He hunches back against the platform, strangely protective of his hair that’s only grown so long through negligence on the part of his previous handlers.  Even though it’s an irritant more days than not, he fears what his next handlers will do if she changes him too much.  She’s already reconditioned him as far as eating and showering and even sleeping go; but those at least, he’ll be able to fake once someone new is assigned to him. 

While his brain races, she reads him and backs away. 

“Or not; I won’t cut if it you want to keep it.  I can’t deny it’s a little sexy.”  She goes out then, and he wonders if he’s going to be told to become intimate with her now. 

 

A third agent arrives.  This one is male, five foot eight inches, 170 pounds.  This puts him in considerably smaller than the blonde male.  He has brown hair on his head and on his face.  He talks incessantly. 

“Our friend is scruffy,” he says when he sees the soldier for the first time.  He reaches out and touches the soldier’s face, which makes the soldier realize that his own face is also covered in hair.  He bares his teeth at the man.  “He’s growling at me.  Is he allowed to growl at me?”

“Get you fucking finger out of his face.  Of course he’s growling at you,” Agent 1 says. 

“We’ve been seeing if he showed any inclination to shave that off.  What do you think, asset?” Agent 2 asks.  He continues to stare at the new man as he walks to the computer and starts to press buttons. 

“Of course he wants to shave,” Agent 3 says at Agent 2 hits him ineffectually. 

“I said, what do _you_ think, asset?” she asks.  “Shave, yes or no.  This isn’t a trick question.” 

“Shave,” he answers.  He doesn’t know why he picks that option.  Perhaps it will do something for the discomfort he feels when he rests his chin against his chest and shuts his brain off for a few hours. 

“It speaks!” Agent 3 exclaims. 

“Just for that, you’re helping him shave,” Agent 2 tells him with a glower. 

Which is why the asset finds himself in the same room as the shower chamber and the toilet, which thankfully, none of these agents seem inclined to watch him use. There is a small sink by the wall where the soldier is supposed to gargle with a bright green liquid every night, and that’s the extent of this room.

The bearded agent swings upon a cupboard above the sink and takes out a razor and soap. 

“Okay, be honest.  Are you going to do unspeakable things to yourself or to me with this razor?”  The soldier looks at him.  “Waiting for an answer.” 

It grates on the soldier how these new agents keep doing that.  Asking questions until he finally responds, with no way to tell what the correct response is or what the wrong answer will cost him.  He’s lucky enough to keep guessing right. 

“No.”

“Fan-fucking tastic.  Here you go.”  The agent hands the soldier the razor, and he grips it tightly in his flesh hand.  The lack of memory scrapes tell him that this is another task he doesn’t traditionally take care of himself, but the agent is tapping away at a hand-held device and not looking at him.  He understands the mechanics of shaving, so he wets the soap, rubs it against his face, and lifts the razor to his jaw.

Blood in the sink informs him that he’s cut himself, and he feels a sting as he pulls the blade away from his face.  It takes a few seconds for the agent to notice. 

“Shit, that’s deep,” he blurts as he shoves the device into his pocket and moves forward.  His eyes dart around the room and he grabs a cloth from a shelf, pressing it against the soldier’s face without wetting it. 

He freezes and lets the agent address his wound.  It stops bleeding within the minute, no matter how deep the agent thinks it is, and the man finally pulls the cloth away.  Some of the blood sticks to it and pulls on the healing skin, but it doesn’t reopen.  The agent wets the cloth and cleans the blood away. 

“Take two,” he says when he pulls the razor out of the soldier’s hand.  “For the record, too much pressure.”  He holds the razor up to the soldier’s face, and the soldier flicks his eyes toward the blade, intent on watching.  It’s humiliating that he’s made an error with the razor resulting in an injury to himself. 

The agent must think that the eye flick indicates nervousness, because he starts talking in what he likely thinks is a soothing manner.

“It’s alright, no big deal, just gonna get this scruff off your face.  We need a little more lather…there we go, and now we gently scrape the skin instead of fucking ramming the blade into our cheek.  Got it.”  He babbles on until he presumable runs out of words; even then, it doesn’t stop him from trying to talk. 

“You got any questions for me?” he asks the soldier as he tilts his head back. 

“Did Captain America survive?” he says, then clenches up.  It’s impossible that they don’t know about his failed mission, but asking questions like this serves no purpose but to get him strapped to the chair with a rubber wedge between his teeth. 

The agent blinks at him.  “Well, I meant about shaving.  But sure, we can talk about Cap.”  He turns the soldier’s head so he can get at the un-sliced cheek.  “Captain America is indeed alive.  Someone fished him of the Potomac; that’s 0 for 2 in terms of drowning.”  The soldier keeps his eyes locked on a drop of blood drying on the floor.  He’s been running that question through his mind and answering it with several more of his own ever since he walked away from the Captain’s body.  Is he alive?  Why does it matter?  Is there any truth to what he’d said?  How long will the soldier have to live with this knowledge?  Will the Captain come after him again? 

“I don’t suppose you know what pulled him out of the water?” the agent asks.  The soldier keeps his face carefully blank.  His head goes fuzzy and light again, and he grips the side of the sink to stay upright. 

 

“Just a quick poke,” Agent 4 tells him as he presses the plunger and shoots something clear into the soldier’s veins.  This agent showed up three nights ago, finally bringing the number of handlers up to an acceptable four.  He’s five-foot-nine-inches and 128 pounds with curly brown hair and a shyness that none of the other agents possess. 

“There you go.  All done.”  He puts a piece of flesh-colored plastic over the pinprick, and the soldier squints at him in confusion. 

“That’s not all.” 

“It is all,” the agent insists with a smile.  The floating feeling in his skull takes hold, and before he knows it, the soldier is on his feet and looking into the man’s face from eye level.

“There should be more.  There should be ten times more,” he snaps, wondering what in the hell is pushing him to this.  He doesn’t speak to Hydra agents this way.  He’s going to get thrown in the chair and then in the Cryochamber.

Except he hasn’t been so far.  He’s gotten more and more control, and in turn become more uncontrollable, in the month since coming to New York; now it’s spilling out of him.  They’re going to notice that he’s gone unstable. 

“How many were there yesterday?” the agent asks calmly. 

“Two,” the soldier says through gritted teeth. 

“How many were there the day before?”

“Two.”

“How many the day before that?”

“Two,” he says as the ire starts to leak out of him.  The man puts a hand on his shoulder and pushes him gingerly back on to the medical table. 

“Just sit for a minute.  So, one is less than two, but it’s not a lot less.  You don’t need the second shot today.  There’s nothing to get worked up about.”  He moves to scribble something down on a clipboard as the soldier sits and wonders why his thoughts are racing and why he’s so aware of the little details of his surroundings, like the coolness of the table and the weight of his arm. 

“You feeling normal?” the agent asks him after a few minutes of sitting and breathing.  The soldier recognizes it for dismissal, and he gets to his feet. 

“Hungry,” he tells him.  It isn’t mealtime. 

“Go eat.”  The light, racing thoughts visit him again. 

“Tired,” he says next, cautiously.  It isn’t time for rest.

“Go sleep.”

The soldier wants to laugh.  As it is, he manages to quirk his lips up.  Head still light, he makes his way toward the food. 

He puts some of Agent 1’s red sauce from a plastic bottle into his smoothie as he blends it.  It tastes terrible, and he relishes the taste on his tongue. 

“You almost have an expression there,” Agent 3 tells him as he walks by.  Nothing happens. 

He does laugh this time.  It sounds like he’s choking, and Agent 3 comes back to check on him. 

 

The soldier starts planning his escape the next day.  These handlers can’t contain him, and now that he’s practiced, he doesn’t need them to care for him anymore.  He thinks he’s tried to do this before, but it must have been long before…before ‘eat this,’ ‘stand here,’ ‘shut your eyes,’ ‘strap him down.’ 

He makes sure that his weapons are in perfect working order.  He extends his sleeping time so that none of the agents will expect him to be up.  He steals some dry, blue spheres from Agent 3 under the impression that they’re food.  He even tries a few, and doesn’t throw up. 

On the night of his escape, he gets up silently, straps his weapons, his blue food, and his soap to his body.  He creeps out of the cell and heads for the main entrance to the compound. 

He has no idea where he’s going next.  It’s as exhilarating as it is disconcerting. 

He’s closing in on the freight elevator which will take him out of the compound when it dings and the doors slide open with a squeal.

Captain America walks into the Hydra compound, dressed in civilian clothing, and startles when he sees the solder crouched against the opposite wall. 

Captain America…Steve....stands in the entrance with the dim illumination of the elevator streaming around him into the dark antechamber.  Slowly, he walks toward the soldier and crouches down to eye level. 

“Hi, Bucky,” he says quietly and fondly, looking the soldier up and down and smiling.  The soldier doesn’t say anything.  “I see that you’re escaping.” 

“Get out of here.  You can’t be here; there are four agents,” he growls, growing more and more panicked by the second.  Maybe this is where he was headed, he thinks.  Back to DC.  Back to get answers.  But if Ca-Steve is here, then the soldier either has to leave him behind or stay with him; he struggles to choose which is worse as he grabs Steve’s arm and tries to pull him up.  “Come on, we have to leave.  You can’t be here; there are four agents.” 

“Hey Cap,” Agent 1 says from the soldier’s left, and he’s instantly on his feet, aiming his Derringer and subtly blocking Steve from view. 

“It’s okay, Bucky,” Steve tells him, pushing past the soldier and walking into the main lab.  “This is Agent Barton.  He works with me.”  The soldier doesn’t lower his weapon.  His heart pounds silently in his chest as he tries to sort out facts. 

“I’d put the weapon down, asset,” the female agent’s voice rings out, and the soldier sees the glint of her eyes from a corner of the darkened room.  He knows she’s aiming for his forehead. 

“You’re Hydra,” he spits at Steve.  He shakes his head and reaches for the soldier’s shoulder.

“No, Buck.  I’m not.  None of us are.  We’ve been rehabilitating you for the past month.”  He takes a breath as he grasps the soldier’s metal shoulder.  “I’m so sorry for the deception.  But we had to move quickly and get you out without jarring you too harshly.”    

“Where are the real agents?” he barks.  His loyalties are shifting without warning and he doesn’t know what to hold onto and what to let go of. 

“They were gone when we got here.  Bucky, I really am sorry, but they had you drugged up, and you didn’t have any agency.  We couldn’t risk you going into the wind.”  The other agents shuffle forward, and the soldier stares the four of them down.  Agent 4 looks a little sheepish; Agent 3 waves. 

The soldier looks at each of them in turn, and then he flips the safety on his Derringer and hands it to Steve, still scowling. 

“I surrender myself into your custody,” he tells him, watching Steve’s people for sudden movements.  Steve puts his other hand on the soldier’s flesh shoulder and pulls him in to press their foreheads together.  It feels...it feels like being pulled out of the river into the open air must have felt. 

“We obviously still have some work to do,” Steve tells him.  He doesn’t move his forehead, so the soldier just breathes him in. 


End file.
